AMBITIOUS Merthyr Town Football Club have netted a £500,000 award to install a 3rd generation synthetic pitch at Penydarren Park.

It is part of their exciting plans to secure the future of the club and hit the target of increasing their role as a community organisation.

A new 25-year lease for the Park is being negotiated with Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council. On completion, work on the pitch will get under way by the Bristol contractors Verde Recreo.

The firm have more than 18 years experience in the industry and their first major task in South Wales was to refurbish the astroturf at Abertillery Leisure Centre.

The huge cash boost was confirmed at a meeting of the Borough Council. The money will come from the Ffos y Fran Community Fund, which is financed by royalty payments received by the council from Miller Argent Limited based on tonnage of coal extracted from the Ffos y Fran land reclamation scheme.

Merthyr Town sprang up to preserve football in the area after the former Merthyr Tydfil club which was liquidated three years ago.

Southern League status was lost but the re-formed club, Merthyr Town, was welcomed into The Toolstation Western League and after two successive promotions, a place was regained last season in the Evo-Stik Southern League (Div 1 South and West). The club's first season saw them having to play at Taff's Well because the Administrator waited to see if there were any offers to buy the ground. They were able to return to the Park two seasons ago. And the club, under co-managers Garry Shephard and Danny Carter just missed out on a speedy return to the Premier Division of the league, losing in the Play-Offs final, after extra time, in Hungerford earlier this month.

The planned developments at the Park include new floodlights, developing the entrance to the ground, demolishing the derelict Strikers social club, providing more car-parking space, and extending social and community facilities.

Merthyr Town FC are now owned by the fans and for the fans with the remit to be very much a community club.Company secretary John Strand said: "The club sees this development as a springboard for the club to become a hub for football development in Merthyr Tydfil and the surrounding areas."He added: "The club wish to thank the leader of the council Coun Brendan Toomey and the chief executive Mr Gareth Chapman for their invaluable support."

The club has also obtained funding from The FA Football Foundation and the European Regional Development Fund towards the cost of the project.

Merthyr Town chairman Meurig Price commented: "We feel that the new 3G pitch is definitely the way forward to ensure stability of the club. It will improve the quality of the football and we won't have matches postponed in the wet weather."We will be able to use it much more than a grass pitch. This season we had 62 games on the ground and the pitch suffered because we didn't have the money or the equipment to improve the pitch."

They expect a big demand from local sporting clubs to hire the new pitch. "Extra income is the way forward for the club and we will achieve this through hiring out the pitch. And we want to extend the club to be a part of the whole community of Merthyr Tydfil. The new pitch will also help us to make further progress as a club," Mr Price added.

The chairman said the pitch installation was expected to take 12 weeks. "This may mean that we will have to play a couple of games early next season on another ground."

Mr Strand explained:" This facility will enable the pitch to be used far more extensively than it is at the moment and will be available for use in wet weather conditions which make the current pitch often unplayable."

Despite the work of the groundsman, the pitch was often bumpy in the season just ended. And Mr Price said: "A 3G pitch will enable the team to play in the style which best suits them."

Mr Strand explained that the pitch would also be available to a far wider variety of users than at present. This will include footballers from the club's associated team for disabled footballers, the Town's Football Academy, college teams, veterans' teams and ladies football.The pitch will also be available for private hire.To deal with the increased usage, a stadium manager will be eventually employed.

The artificial pitch has a life of about 10 years for the surface and about 20 years for underneath.

Disabled footballers were at Penydarren Park on Sunday and they are likely to be the last to use the ground before the new development kicks off to mark a new era for football in the town.

As a neutral observer, and someone who wants to see Merthyr doing well, I must say that I am very surprised by this. The Conference does not accept clubs with 3G pitches, and you are therefore now just one level below the highest you can climb.

It begs the question - what is the point? Surely the point of competing in the English system is to try and get back to the Conference (or at least BSS where Merthyr should easily be able to hold their own). If the aim of the game is just to increase income, why not go to the LoW and take the easy money on offer for winning that year in, year out?

Genuinely not on a wind up here, but surely this will impact on attendances if there is not much prospect of progressing much further than you already have? Perhaps the Conference will change the rules? I know that Maidstone have a similar pitch and they are marching up through the leagues at the moment.

Fait point, although I'd rather have a Club that can afford to stay alive. It's the only viable option to sustain a Club which is in the merky depths of Non-League finances.

Fact is we can't afford new floodlights (Which I was told, have to be changed) this grant includes brand new floodlights. Remember this is a marathon, not a sprint and I for one would much rather a Club exist than one that climbs up the ladder quickly and then (Shit... how do we pay for all this?)

Three g's is the way forward for our community club....Good management on and off the pitch, Good football and the most important one G for GRANT...progress through stability ....we've been there for the first one hundred years....let's be there for the next century too...with a 2013 pitch not an 1913 one....boz

ncfc wrote:As a neutral observer, and someone who wants to see Merthyr doing well, I must say that I am very surprised by this. The Conference does not accept clubs with 3G pitches, and you are therefore now just one level below the highest you can climb.

It begs the question - what is the point? Surely the point of competing in the English system is to try and get back to the Conference (or at least BSS where Merthyr should easily be able to hold their own). If the aim of the game is just to increase income, why not go to the LoW and take the easy money on offer for winning that year in, year out?

Genuinely not on a wind up here, but surely this will impact on attendances if there is not much prospect of progressing much further than you already have? Perhaps the Conference will change the rules? I know that Maidstone have a similar pitch and they are marching up through the leagues at the moment.

There's a whole lot of debate about all these points on the thread '3G Pitch Discussions' at the top.

ncfc wrote:As a neutral observer, and someone who wants to see Merthyr doing well, I must say that I am very surprised by this. The Conference does not accept clubs with 3G pitches, and you are therefore now just one level below the highest you can climb.

It begs the question - what is the point? Surely the point of competing in the English system is to try and get back to the Conference (or at least BSS where Merthyr should easily be able to hold their own). If the aim of the game is just to increase income, why not go to the LoW and take the easy money on offer for winning that year in, year out?

Genuinely not on a wind up here, but surely this will impact on attendances if there is not much prospect of progressing much further than you already have? Perhaps the Conference will change the rules? I know that Maidstone have a similar pitch and they are marching up through the leagues at the moment.

Nothing wrong with a bit of debate, as Imp said all this has been debated at length on another thread, and nothing said above is inaccurate or wrong fair debate & points for me, but if we did rise through this S&W SL division and the SLP division then it would present the conference with a problem, like Maidstone or Sutton Coldfield may also do. Have the conference actually rejected a team for this reason before?, is there a president? I am not sure there is, but I understand rules are rules.

The fact is that it would costs us as a club hundreds of thousands of pounds even to get the ground up to standard to compete in the Southern League/BSS or conference, (floodlights, turnstiles, access, terracing & additional facilities which this grant will now facilitate or help us to facilitate) not to mention doubling, or even trebling the wage bill to compete at the very top end of those divisions (which obviously the grant cannot be used for), and in the absence of someone coming in and writing off £60/£70k a year minimum to fund additional wages, unless its loaned to club or something is given in return, the latter is just not going to happen in my view.

The installation of a 3G pitch and vastly improving the PP facility for the long term in my view is the way to put the club on a much sounder footing to progress, yes financially with additional revenue, and less postponements, but more importantly it will allow us to open up the facility of Penydarren Park to the wider community, bring our exiled academy back to Penydarren Park as its rightful base, it will also allow us a much higher usage for Youth & first team matches & training which cuts down on the current costs used to hire out external facilities etc.

The money being spent in non league football these days is frightening, and unfortunately most clubs see that playing grossly inflated wages to players season in season out is the only way forward out of non league, unfortunately this cost is being passed on to the supporters in several ways not to mention admission prices, for some clubs this works, but for 10 times more clubs it doesn't, remember we've been there done that, and I don't want to go back, I want to see the club build gradually, its infrastructure, its academy, its youth set up, its facility, and give the local and wider community the same opportunity to embrace and access the club if they so which.

I might be getting ahead of myself here but in my view only then will we know if we are equipped as a club & community to go onto bigger and better things, full time status, conference football, football league etc all seem a distant memory currently, but as other small clubs & towns have shown, certainly not un-achievable.

I agree...this club has only one gear .....forward...not reverse...the club failed its mot and was heading for the breakers yard....now I would rather see football at penydarren park on a permanent basis at this standard for a few seasons than the boom and bust politics of some of the other clubs....prepare the ground...sow the 3G seed and eventually nurturing the talent we have locally....there is a huge catchment area for this level of football and the club is on the up...progress through stability...one lap at a time....not scaletrix out on the first bend....boz

Yes, I accept the points about the cost of upgrading Penydarren. Having visited a few times last season it would be a big job. Perhaps this is the best option going forward. It does seem stupid that the Conference won't accept 3G pitches, yet it is fine for Champions League football!!

I have a feeling that the Conference will be tested on this shortly anyway. Maidstone are I think only 1 level below the Conference South now and with average crowds of 2,000 plus I can't see that it will take long for them to be in the promotion mix. The Conference will then have a decision to make.

The use of these pitches is increasing every year and with the weather is this country the way it is, I imagine eventually they will be the norm. You will probably be ahead of the game!

Yes, I accept the points about the cost of upgrading Penydarren. Having visited a few times last season it would be a big job. Perhaps this is the best option going forward. It does seem stupid that the Conference won't accept 3G pitches, yet it is fine for Champions League football!!

I have a feeling that the Conference will be tested on this shortly anyway. Maidstone are I think only 1 level below the Conference South now and with average crowds of 2,000 plus I can't see that it will take long for them to be in the promotion mix. The Conference will then have a decision to make.

The use of these pitches is increasing every year and with the weather is this country the way it is, I imagine eventually they will be the norm. You will probably be ahead of the game!

Yes I agree mate, it wasnt too long ago that they were not allowed to be used in the FA Cup at all, then the FA changed the ruling to allow them to be used up to the 4th Qualifiying Round.

There is strong campaign for the rules to be reversed to allow the use of 3G pitches by a group called 3G4US, headed up by co-owner of Maidstone United. I contacted him last week about 3G and he was very enthusiastic to gain our support and help and assist us in a postive way, its basically transformd the forturnes of their club, likewise when we spoke to Sutton Coldfield, and I was certainly suprised to learn the amount of clubs that are making genuine enquiries & building nest eggs for the day when this get the nod at the FA (current football league clubs included) about aquiring main 3gs pitches.

I totally understand the potential short term problems and adjustments the 3G pitch at PP is going to cause for everyone at the club and it is a bold move, I ve had sleepless nights over it and will no doubt continue to do so until the pitch is up and running and the FA/FL amend its ruling, but for me the benefits are unrivaled as mentioned in posts above)

Hope to see you next year ncfc, lets says certain players can enjoy rolls in the mud at away games ;-)